Tuesday, July 1, 2014

By now it shouldn't be news that I dislike Andy Warhol. My lack of respect for him (as aforementioned in my post "Art Grunge") describes exactly why I'm okay with wearing his stupid iconography on apparel, where it belongs. People seem to have a really hard time accepting that Warhol was a total cop out excuse for an artist, and that he exploited the criticism he received to furnish a persona concerned with concepts like 'celebrity' and 'mystique.' But he didn't actually know shit about celebrity and mystique, he only appropriated the rhetoric of his dissenters to afford himself the reputation of someone clever (read: troll), and then he called that very action "art" when it's not anything but self-reference. Aesthetic objects that reference cultural points outside of themselves are not art, they are propaganda, and running with that contention I would even go so far as to say that 99% of the shit you see in contemporary galleries isn't actually art even though curators will insist it is, and then shove their university diplomas in your face as if that somehow legitimizes their opinion.Can everyone just shut up and sit down? This is a good segue into my least favorite Andy Warhol quote: "I think everybody should like everybody." Really? Do shitty people with shitty ideas, no ethics, and violent agendas deserve to be liked? Please die, Warhol. I know you're already dead but please die a little more.